Looking for Alaska episode 5 review: Best day, worst day
By Meg Dowell
During episode 5 of Looking for Alaska, things between Miles and Alaska are finally looking OK again. But this means more secrets are soon to emerge.
Well, it took a demonic swan and almost getting caught in the dark, but Miles and Alaska are officially on speaking terms again. Just in time for her to reveal the real reason she stays on Culver Creek’s campus for as many days out of the year as she’s allowed.
But before we get into that, we need to address something that happens toward the beginning of the episode. They called it a “prank.” It’s something so much worse. To get back at Alaska for her supposed wrongdoings, the Weekend Warriors do the unthinkable: They flood her dorm room, leading to the destruction of her Life’s Library.
Um, hello? No one told me there would be nightmare-inducing horror in this show. I did not need to see all those books being ruined. I’m going to be thinking about this for the rest of eternity. How dare you. (For the record, days have passed and I am still thinking about it.)
Too far. And I’m certainly not the only one who thinks so. The Colonel, who is now also back on speaking terms with Alaska, decides they have to make the Warriors pay for what they have done. Little do they know their actions will have major consequences moving forward.
But they’re not thinking about that now. They are only thinking of revenge.
After they pull their prank, The Colonel, Alaska, Miles, Lara, and Takumi gather together alone and end up revealing some of their darkest secrets to one another.
It’s during this game of Best Day, Worst Day that Alaska reveals to the group the real reason she hates going home. Ever since the day her mother died, her father has blamed her for the loss, and it has pretty much ruined her entire life.
Our hearts are breaking for Alaska, not because the things she has done recently weren’t wrong, but because she is still in pain after essentially losing both of her parents at just eight years old — one through death and the other through his inability to forgive.
As we will soon see, Alaska still holds her mother close to her heart. And it’s for this reason that she, like Miles, is on a search for meaning, for some kind of purpose in her life. For a way out of the labyrinth of suffering, shall we say.
Seeing these characters bond on such a deep level really is the turning point in this story. We have spent the last five episodes getting to know who they are, where they’re from, how they react to certain situations and what they want most out of life.
Now we are seeing each of them differently. And if you couldn’t already tell, this is going to matter most of all in the final three episodes of the series.
Even if you haven’t read the book in its entirety, you probably know what’s coming. Though it still has plenty of lighthearted moments — it needs those, really, to help you hold on to some form of hope through all this — the show has gotten progressively darker since it began. And not just in the sense that more and more of its scenes are taking place at night after the sun has gone down.
We’ve been set up for what’s to come (and brilliantly). That doesn’t mean what’s coming is going to be any easier to handle.
The most important moments of Pudge’s relationships with Lara and Alaska — and the aftermath of Alaska and The Colonel’s ultimate prank on the Weekday Warriors — are on the horizon. Spoiler alert: It’s not going to go well.
Next. Hulu’s Looking for Alaska is 100 percent John Green approved. dark